Israeli strikes on northern Gaza have killed at least 22 people, mostly women and children, Palestinian officials said Sunday, as the Israeli offensive in the hard-hit and isolated north entered a third week and aid groups described a humanitarian catastrophe.
Iran’s supreme leader, meanwhile, said Israeli strikes on the country over the weekend “should not be exaggerated nor downplayed,” while stopping short of calling for retaliation, suggesting Iran is carefully weighing its response to the attack.
On Saturday, Israeli warplanes attacked military targets in Iran in response to an Iranian ballistic missile attack earlier this month.
Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said “it is up to the authorities to determine how to convey the power and will of the Iranian people to the Israeli regime and to take actions that serve the interests of this nation and country.”
The 85-year-old Khamenei’s comments on Sunday carefully threaded the idea of Iran being a major power in the Middle East without directly calling for a new attack on Israel, which he alone would decide.
The exchanges of fire have raised fears of an all-out regional war pitting Israel and the United States against Iran and its militant proxies, which include Hamas and the Hezbollah militant group in Lebanon, where Israel launched a ground invasion earlier this month after nearly a year of lower-level conflict.
The Gaza Health Ministry’s emergency service said that 11 women and two children were among the 22 killed in the strikes late Saturday on several homes and buildings in the northern Gaza town of Beit Lahiya. It said a further 15 people were wounded and that the death toll could rise. It listed the names of those killed, who mostly came from three families.
The Israeli military said it carried out a precise strike on militants in a structure in Beit Lahiya and took steps to avoid harming civilians. It disputed what it said were “numbers published by the media,” without elaborating or providing evidence for its own account.
Israel is still carrying out daily strikes across Gaza, even as it wages and air and ground war with Hezbollah. Two people were wounded after an explosive drone launched from Lebanon slammed into a building in an industrial area of northern Israel, authorities said. An Israeli airstrike on a southern neighborhood of Beirut sent flames and smoke climbing into the air.
